Saturday, November 17, 2007

When I got my new Dell Inspirion 1501 laptop, one of the first things I did was port my email from Outlook Express that was on my old Windows XP desktop.

Ever since, every time I open Vista Mail, the CPU shoots up to 100%, and stays there for hours. I finally, accidentally, figured out the cause. I was looking for certain files on my hard drive, and noticed I had hundreds and hundreds of zero-byte EML files. So I searched for all EML files (using Agent Ransack), and found 41,000 of them - 30,000 of which were zero-byte!

After I deleted the empty ones, Mail immediately started behaving normally. Of course, that was three days ago, and when I checked just now, I see I have 284 empty EML files. Haven't Googled to see what may be going on, but I'm just glad for now Mail works correctly. For a while, at least. Now if I could just get any screen saver to start working again...

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Before making the move to SQL Server, Larry specialized in Windows programming in C/Win32, C++/MFC, and C#/.NET. His blog focuses on query tuning, database optimization, and system performance, and features handy scripts, practical tips, and occasional dispatches from the many dark corners of SQL Server.